The Daily Poem

Noisy upstairs neighbors have been consternating mankind for as long as second-floors have existed. The all-too-familiar phenomenon has inspired novels, movies, Tom Waits songs, and even a poem or two–like today’s. Happy reading.

Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that it is impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat. Dickinson, on the other hand, claims to know what caterpillars care (or don’t care) about. Happy reading.

Today’s poem is the first half of Randall Jarrell’s reverie about his Los Angeles childhood–and one of the most effortless examples of terza rima in all of English poetry.

Today’s poem is the satirical saga of an anachronistic naval battle. Heave ho and happy reading!

Nothing feels better and hurts worse than nostalgia. Happy reading.

Today’s brief poem goes out to teachers everywhere as they return to work. Good luck and happy reading.

“Poet Seamus Heaney described Holub’s writing as ‘a laying bare of things, not so much the skull beneath the skin, more the brain beneath the skull; the shape of relationships, politics, history; the rhythms of affections and disaffection; the ebb and flow of faith, hope, violence, art.’ In 1988 poet Ted Hughes called Holub ‘one of the half dozen most important poets writing anywhere.’”

“To die, to sleep.” Sometimes the space between the two seems as slight as that intervening comma. Happy reading.

I might say today’s poem is all subtext–if it weren’t for all the text. Ambiguous praise, sincere romantic angst, just the right amount of bitter wit: this sonnet has it all. Happy reading.

This special, live edition of The Daily Poem was recorded at the Close Reads 10th Anniversary celebration last weekend in Concord, NC. Happy reading!

Best known as the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings enjoyed a long side-hustle as an occasional poet. Happy reading.